54 owner, a young man he took prisoner and threatened to kill. When the car was spotted, two hours later, in Wright City, Missouri, by its po- lice chief, Bill Bur- gess, and his deputy, Jackson was the only person they saw in the car. As Jackson's ve- hicle drew alongside the police car, J ack- son pointed his shot- gun out the window and fired. Although one of the pellets struck the deputy's forehead, both he and Chief Burgess fired their revolvers at J ack- ANNALS OF CR.IME A VIOLENT ACT-II and Wright City, Jackson had pulled the car to the side of the road and made the owner get into the trunk. T HE first person in a position of higher authority to arrive in W right City that night was a captain in the Missouri State Highway Patrol, whose name was John Ford. On Mon- day evening, he ordered that road- blocks be set up three deep on all roads leading to Interstate Highway 70. Other members of the Highway Pa- trol and several agents from the St. Louis office of the Federal Bureau of Inves- tigation arrived during the night. A manhunt is not ordinarily part of the experience of an F.B.I. agent. "You'll have a case like this maybe only once in a career," one of them said later. Few of the younger agents had any experience of search- ing for an armed killer down cornrows and in beanfields and grain bins, and didn't really know what to expect. The agents arrived in Wright City in their suits, went out into the rain, and sank to the tops of their city shoes in muck as they began pulling aside barn doors and knocking at the entrances of farmhouses. A woman told troopers at a road- block that Jackson had passed so close to the front of her car in crossing the highway that she near ly ran him down. In the middle of the night, a man called from a trailer park half a mile west of the spot where Jackson had left the Cadillac and said that he and his wife had heard the door of their picku p truck close and someone brush up against their trailer. Another man there son as he fled. Altogether, they got off six rounds- Burgess four and the deputy two, before he fell back, over- come by the shock of his wound. Chief Burgess, who had never before shot at another human being, later accounted for his having trouble striking a target at such close range by saying he'd had a sudden case of "shaky hands." Be- fore Jackson's tai1-lights were on the far side of a rise about a hundred yards away, though, Burgess had registered the sight of Jackson leaning to his left, as if he had been hit. A few minutes later, a highway patrolman named Charles Carver found the Cadillac in the grass between the lanes of the interstate with the driver's door open. As he approached, he heard banging on the trunk and shouting for help. Somewhere between O'Fallon you MOT'4ER PICKED ME. UP IN A SALOON ON SECOND AVE.NUE.. IT WAS THE SE.VENTIES,AN D PEOPLE.. Dr t> THAT SORT OF THING- o o WE WAfTED UJ.JTIL THE. LATE. E.IGHTIES TO HA.VE CH[LÞ EN BECAUSE WE HAt> ouR CAREE S TO THINK OF AND) BESIDES) IN TijoSE DAYS PEOPLE þ\ Þ TUAT SOIi\T OF TH'ING-. BOT NOW WE. HAVE.. GooD NEW . HOW WOULD you LIKE.. A L\TTLE.. BAB'f B OTHE.R THE SEARCH T HERE was blood on the steer- ing wheel of the Cadillac. Mike Wayne Jackson had stolen the car at the end of the day, in O'Fallon, Missouri. That morning-Monday, September 22, 1986-in Indianapolis, Jackson had murdered his probation officer with a shotgun when the officer, Tom Gahl, came to the door of his house. Jackson had previously been behaving strangely, and his appear- ance had degenerated; his family thought he had resumed an addiction to heroin. Fleeing from the murder, Jackson attempted to rob a small market and killed the owner, James B. Hall. He then travelled three hundred miles in stolen cars, from Indianapolis to Missouri. Outside a small town west of St. Louis, he drew alongside a car driven by a man named Earl Dallas Finn and shot Finn dead through the open windows of the F , cars; Inn s car was a model commonly used by police depart- ments, and Finn was wearing a shirt of a color that matched a policeman's. Around 7 :30, Jackson stole the Cadillac from its DON'" BE AFRAID. WE.' LL STIL.L ALLOW 'fou 1 0 LIVE. HERE.. '/ E1 , [a...\ ',". ... . ." ..,...... . - -.... aV .. ! ON!)ING IN. TI{E. E.LE.C.1RONIC AGE.. 1